It would depend on the "something" being considered, but I at least consider the scientific method to be extendable to the formation of other beliefs, and that is why I consider myself a materialist, I see too much of a comparison between the mind and the complete nervous system. Ockham's Razor would have me form the simplest explanation. I could be wrong, but based on the way I form my thoughts I have no practical reason to have serious doubts, although I think entertaining doubts is an important lead in to what beliefs should be formed.

When it comes down to brass tax I am relying on my intuitions, but I feel confident that I have examined a wide range of thoughts on the issue and will remain open minded to those trains of thought even though I am essentially relying on my education, formal and informal, to justify my position. The important thing to preserve is that my position can change as new information is discovered or presented to me.

let's not forget that in practical terms, getting a reliable or true outcome is incredibly important. Science has to provide the basis for engineering, creating machines, structures, medicines, and so on, all of which are reliant on very precise knowledge of very specific matters in situations where getting it right has very serious implications. So in regards to all of thse practical issues, the scientific method is completely indispensable. So then if you ask yourself, what about the kinds of truths that can't be made subject to the scientific method - questions of meaning, purpose, and value - then how do you proceed? I think philosophy has previously tried to bring the rigour of the scientific method to philosophical questions which might be a noble aspiration, but it is very hard to do. I think Husserl said this is what we wanted to do - examine 'experience' with the rigour of science. And broadly this is what Reconstructo, quoting Hegel, is talking about with regards to the 'first science' i.e. matters of ultimate import and meaning. This is what metaphysics is supposed to address although not many will consider it nowadays for various reasons.

This doesn't mean that reality is only dependent upon our own mind and we can slip into solipsism. I think that is where people have trouble with this perspective. Even reality as we experience is greatly impacted by other minds.

I see no objection to saying that the natural World eludes conceptual understanding. Indeed, this would only mean that the existence of Nature is revealed by mathematical algorthm, for example, and not by concepts--that is by words having a meaning. Now, modern physics leads in the end to this result: one cannot speak of the physical reality without contradictions; as soon as one passes from algorthm to verbal description, one contradicts himself (particle-waves for example). Hence there would be no discourse revealing the physical or natural reality. This reality (as presented as early as Galileo) would be revealed to man only by the articulated silence of algorthm.....Now it does seem that algorthm, being nontemporal, does not reveal Life. But neither does dialectic. Therefore it may be necessary to combine Plato's conception(for the mathematical, or better, geometrical, substructure of the world) with Aristotle's (for its biological structure) and Kant's (for its physical, or better, dynamic, structure), while reserving Hegelian dialectic for Man and History..

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-------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 10:08 PM ----------


Your experience of your left shoe is the only left shoe you've got.

Can that really be true? Then, I am indeed, impoverished. And, worse, it is raining, and I will have a very wet left foot!

Where did you ever get the idea that the experience of X is identical with X?

...even memory evolves and re-aligns itself...so as a perception X is always changing...which means that your left shoe experience, in the present, is the only one you have, as a true experienced left shoe...

Objectivity is social, not mind-independent

Huh? I thought objectivity was mind-independent. I thought subjectivity was what you would call mind-dependent.

I have mentioned before that metaphysics requires meta-cognition.



Why is this distinction useful? Because when we are asking questions about the nature of knowledge, we are not necessarily questioning the reality of the external world in an obvious or gross manner. We are questioning the nature of our own awareness and asking ourselves how we know what we know. It is as much about questioning the nature of what we know, or think we know, as questioning the nature of objects of perception. I think it is fair to say that natural science will always start from the presumption that nature herself is real, or at least will not start by asking the question, is there a more fundamental level of reality than nature. Whereas philosophy will at least entertain the idea that there might be different levels or deeper causes or some aspect of being which is not fully disclosed by the examination of nature as such.

Now it seems to me that to insist that ordinary cognition, or our common-sense perception of the world, is the touchstone of reality, that against which everything else should be judged, really denies the possibility of any kind of meta-cognitive strategy before you even set out. So, as Pythagorean remarked above, this really amounts to an anti-philosophy. It might clothe itself in philosophical verbiage, but it doesn't really amount to a deep questioning of one's assumptions about the nature of reality. It more or less starts at the same place as natural science, and then demands justification for the asking of philosophical questions.

It is actually an irony that this is nowadays called skepticism, in my opinion.

Objectivity in terms of natural science is said to be mind-independent, but the point many people are trying to make here is that any notion of a mind-independent reality is based on a fallacy.

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So, the belief that we all have, that the Moon existed before minds existed is based on a fallacy. Do you think that belief is false, or do you just believe that we cannot know that it is true?

I will tell you what I think on this:

Mind and the Moon are Eternal...if they exist in Time even only for one second, they cannot be erased from existence...plus, if there where no minds, this BEING would be something else that we cannot refer to, once this BEING it is what it is, then we can only refer to it...and in it, minds and objects are dependent from the initial conditions, so consequently linked !

So, the belief that we all have, that the Moon existed before minds existed is based on a fallacy. Do you think that belief is false, or do you just believe that we cannot know that it is true?

Anything we know about the Moon could not have existed before minds existed because everything we know about the Moon is dependent upon how minds have constituted that knowledge.

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Is that what you think? Why didn't you say so to begin with? Then this conversation would not have taken place.

I certainly agree with that. But how does that have anything to do with whether the Moon is mind-dependent?

I cannot know whether the number of stars in the universe is an odd number, or an even number. But I know that either it is true that it is an odd number, or it is true that it is an even number. Therefore, I can place a truth value on what I do not know is true. QED.

What existed before the mind wasn't the Moon. The essence of the Moon can only exist because the mind constituted it. The word Moon, the idea of evolving around the Earth, the knowledge about craters which cover it; these are all concepts which have been constituted by minds, therefore they're mind dependent characteristics.

Our beliefs (concepts) about the Moon, and the word, "Moon", are mind-dependent. But the Moon is not mind-dependent. You really have to distinguish between beliefs or concepts, and what it is that they are concepts of, and beliefs about.